I haven’t seeen any discussion on this, so I thought I’d point this out. On page 51, in the last sentence of the paragraph of section 5.3.2 of the game manual, there is an interesting line that implies this.
If a team plays a MATCH as a SURROGATE, it is indicated on the MATCH schedule, it is always their third Qualification MATCH, and the outcome of the MATCH has no affect on the Team’s ranking.
Is this a mistake on FIRST’s part? Or is this specifically referring to championships? Or is this really how all the events will play out? Or am I interpreting this incorrectly? I can’t imagine this to really be the case, as due to how the qualification average is how you’re seeded, this makes the competition far too based on luck.
This doesn’t say that teams will only have two qualification matches. It says that if a team has a surrogate match it will be the third qualification match the team plays. Any matches before or after that would be normal qualification matches that affect the teams ranking.
They’re specifically saying the surrogate is NOT your last match. Nothing in the rule even implies that it is the case. I don’t know where you got that idea.
Way back in the day (2006?), surrogate matches were your last match of qualifications, and teams would not take them as seriously. Maybe they would be more willing to do a high risk strategy, or maybe they would use the match to test new machine features, but it made alliance partners quite unhappy. Moving the surrogate match really helped prevent or at least limit these big problems, since teams are still interested in showing consistent performance at just the third match of the event.
Ah okay, that makes sense. I assumed the surrogate matches were the last match you would play, but the logic behind moving them ahead makes sense as to why that is.